#StruggleOnTheStreets – Girangaon’s Socio-Political Vibrancy | Online Talk by Neera Adarkar: Talk 334
For over a century, a vibrant community of mill workers lived in the chawls surrounding the textile mills of Mumbai, from Tardeo and Byculla to Parel and Lalbaug, collectively called Girangaon, the “village of the mills.” The community was known for both its militancy and its rich culture of collective life. The scale of protest activities in the local maidans and streets, as well as at Hutatma Chowk, had an almost theatrical quality. These public spaces became important stages for political expression – from the struggle for national freedom and the movement for the formation of Maharashtra, to the later struggle against the closure of the textile mills, which ultimately resulted in the loss of jobs for over 100,000 workers. At our Online Talk #StruggleOnTheStreets, architect and urbanist Neera Adarkar talks about the traditional forms of expression that were transformed to communicate new social and political messages in the cultural and political movements that took root in Girangaon.
About the speaker
Neera Adarkar is a practicing architect and an urbanist based in Mumbai. Her work emerges from deep concern of social, urban and gender issues, and she has actively participated in the struggle for the comprehensive preservation of textile mill lands of Mumbai. She runs a joint practice under Adarkar Associates, engaged in architecture, planning, conservation and urban research. She is the chairperson and one of the founder trustees of the School of Environment and Architecture, (SEA), a graduate school of architecture in Mumbai. She has been awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Department of Urban Planning, Urbanism and Architecture of the Katholieke University, Belgium. She has four major books to her credit: ‘One Hundred Years, One Hundred Voices: Oral History of Millworkers of Girangaon’ (2004) coauthored with Meena Menon; and its Marathi version ‘Katha Mumbaichya Girangavchi.’ ‘The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life’ (2011), and ‘MultipliCITIES: Urban Cultures of Mumbai Metropolitan Region (2020).